ting him upon old Blue
Blaze, witness him make his maiden effort. To be sure, old Blue Blaze is
not exactly what you might call a Shetland pony, but by that time she
will have a colt a month or two old, so that while our monkey is up
there, playing Big Injun on the old mare's back, coltie can trot along
behind and play Little Shetland. Meanwhile, we must be making all the
noise we can, clapping our hands and shouting: 'Hurrah! hurrah!
splendid! splendid!' Should our demonstrations fall short of the desired
effect, and we should happen to hear some of our red neighbors shouting
and yelling over there in the woods, we will call them in to help us
out. They will make noise enough to slack his thirst for applause, I
warrant you. They will be so delighted with his performance that nothing
will satisfy them short of taking him home with them--Blue Blaze, coltie
and all--to old Chillicothe, where he shall be kept all his days to play
Big Paleface for the reds, just as Jack Monkey is kept in the Old
Dominion to play Dandy Nigger for the whites.

"Yes, pap, get him the red moccasins. Let him make a monkey of himself,
and 'be somebody and so happy.'"

Now, you must know that our hero, though tough to reproof, was keenly
sensitive to ridicule--a jimson weed to that, a snap dragon to this.
Having discovered his weakness, his mother was much in the habit of
playing upon it, as the only means of persuasion or dissuasion within
her command which was likely to make any impression upon his knotty
young rind. So, while she was spinning out her rigmarole, Sprigg was
making a great show of amusing himself with Pow-wow, slapping him over
the muzzle with his coonskin cap, or setting that ornament in divers
ways on the old dog's head; now with the tail over the right ear, then
over the left, or over the nose; the young sauce-box the while keeping
up, in a confidential undertone to his four-footed chum, a running
commentary on his mother's burlesque of himself, for every word of which
he should have received a sounding spank.

"Some folks think they are monstrous smart, don't they, Pow-wow?"

"You could bark tip a tree and do better than that, couldn't you,
Pow-wow?"

"Funny enough to make a dog laugh, isn't it, Pow-wow?"

"Some folks ought to be told what fools they are, oughtn't they,
Pow-wow?"

"Ding-dong bell, when the fools are all dead,
Then we will have plenty of butter and bread,

won't we, Pow-wow?"

CH